Tom Perez isn’t popular with red state Democrats right now.
Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., is the latest to criticize the Democratic National Committee chairman for a lawsuit alleging a grand Russia-WikiLeaks-Trump conspiracy. Running for re-election in a state the president carried by double digits, Donnelly panned the litigation as “the tired political arguments of 2016.”
“When Joe travels around the state to listen to Hoosiers’ concerns, he hears about the need for more good-paying jobs, protecting access to affordable healthcare, and addressing the opioid crisis,” Joe For Indiana communications director, Will Baskin-Gerwitz, tells the Washington Examiner. “He doesn’t hear about the DNC suing Russia and the Trump campaign.”
Donnelly isn’t alone.
Democrats across the ideological spectrum were quick to disagree with Perez publicly. Former Obama chief strategist David Axelrod dismissed it as “spectacularly ill-timed” while Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who sits on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said the whole thing was “ill-conceived.”
But the harshest criticism has come from Democrats in red states who must tack toward the center to keep their seats. When the lawsuit dropped Friday, the campaign of Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat facing an especially uphill re-election, called it a “silly distraction.” And to date, Donnelly has offered the harshest rebuke to his own party boss.
“We’re focused on talking to Hoosiers about Joe’s hard work, common sense, and vision for the future of Indiana,” Baskin-Gerwitz tells me, “not rehashing the tired political arguments of 2016.”
Anyone outside of D.C. won’t be surprised by Donnelly. Grand legal gestures impress progressive voters who dedicated themselves to all-out resistance long ago. They alienate the more populist part of the electorate, voters who care less about parties and more about policies that affect their everyday lives.
Donnelly needs to win over that moderate base, and Perez made his job that much harder.
